What conversion of DVDs in order to dematerialise them

[gabier]

Hello everybody,
Sorry for the post in French, I had forgotten this forum is English speaking
I want to put all my DVDs (I have near 400 of them) on a NAS so that I can play them easily on my LED TV (Samsung UE32C). I whish to convert them in a format that is directly readable by the TV, in order to avoid an on the fly conversion. The format readable by the TV are TS, AVI, MKV, MP4, MPEG, VRO, etc ...but not directly the VOB files of the DVD.
My DVDs have menus, chapters, 2 audio tracks and subtitles.
Is there a mean to keep all that and achieve the goal ? I expect I must forget about menus, probably chapters also. I hope I can keep the 2 audio tracks and optional subtitles.
I was advised to use conversion to mkv. I made a test with Handbrake. The TV displayed the movie OK, of course without menus and chapters but I could not find how to change the audio (I think I can find that). As for the subtitles I think Handbrakes does not transmit them, so I have no solution.
Has anybody had the same or similar problem and can advise some useful tricks ?
gabier

[newpball]

I think you are mistaken, according to the manual vobs with MPEG-2 are supported.



Make sure you rip the disks as opposed to simply copy the VOBs.

VObs may not be ideal for you and you certainly can mux MPEG-2 streams in other containers. You probably would need to do a bit of trial and error. Transcoding (converting to another compression format) is really the last thing you would want to do.

Unless of course you do not care about quality.

[gabier]

Hello,

Thanks for your answer,
The table in my TV's manual is not the same as yours.

The .vob files do not appear in my file extension column.
But I think you are right, these DVDs were made with a good quality and it would be a pity to downgrade this quality. And the idea I should retrieve the MPEG2 streams in my VOBs and repack them in one of the approved containers sounds good to me, if the VOBS cannot be read.
But with what software ?
The fact is I simply copied the VOBs from the DVD. The TV does not "see" these files, i.e. they are not displayed when selecting the video to display. This means that the TV decided it was not a suitable format.
What do you mean "rip the disks as opposed to simply copy the VOBs". I do not understand what the difference is ..

Gabier

[newpball]

It's not my TV I pulled the manual based on the model you gave me.

And it does support it, is it simply the filename: *.vro / container: VOB / codec: MPEG-2

You may have to remux the vobs to vro.

[El Heggunte]

What conversion of DVDs in order to dematerialise them

1) Sorcery, or 2) U.F.O. technology. Take your pick

[Kerry56]

One solution is to use MakeMKV. It will rip your DVD's into MKV format, and you can keep extra audio and subtitles. The quality will be the same, as MakeMKV does not convert or compress anything. It is also much, much faster than converting to H264 in Handbrake or anything else.

You should test the output from one DVD and see if your TV can handle Mpeg2 video in an MKV container.

MakeMKV is free to use while in beta status, and is supposed to be free forever for DVD decryption and ripping. You may need to update the beta keys each month or so, or download the latest versions as they are released. You can find the beta keys here: http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=105

[newpball]

What conversion of DVDs in order to dematerialise them

1) Sorcery, or 2) U.F.O. technology. Take your pick

Nah, just ask Scotty to beam it up:

[gabier]

You may have to remux the vobs to vro.

OK, I will try this and let you know.

Thanks

[poisondeathray]

If those don't work, you can try vob2mpg, or put it into a transport stream with tsmuxer

dematerialize

[newpball]

If those don't work, you can try vob2mpg, or put it into a transport stream with tsmuxer

dematerialize

[Attachment 30849 - Click to enlarge]

Hahaha!

[PlayT0T]

Encoding/Remuxing 400 DVDs to mkv in 2015 is not the ideal thing to do, unless the content of your DVDs is very exclusive/personnel and can't be found anywhere else. There's an easier way to take where you can accomplish smaller file size movie with much better quality and even faster to do! my 2 cents

[usually_quiet]

You may have to remux the vobs to vro.

VRO was developed for use by some consumer cameras and DVD recorders for recording on DVD-RAM and DVD-RW. There is no need for subtitle support when shooting home video or recording TV, so I don't think muxed DVD subtitles are supported by this container.

If the video was from an NTSC DVD and had N. American closed caption data (stored in the GOP user data), that should be retained, but I think that DVD subtitles would likely have to be demultiplexed and stored in separate files.

[newpball]

You may have to remux the vobs to vro.

VRO was developed for use by some consumer cameras and DVD recorders for recording on DVD-RAM and DVD-RW. There is no need for subtitle support when shooting home video or recording TV, so I don't think muxed DVD subtitles supported by this container.

If the video was from an NTSC DVD and had N. American closed caption data (stored in the GOP user data), that should be retained, but I think that DVD subtitles would likely have to be demultiplexed and stored in separate files.

Good point!

Ideally he muxes this into something like mkv but honestly I am not holding my breath that the wonderfully engineered firmware can handle something such complex as MPEG-2 inside mkv.

[usually_quiet]

Ideally he muxes this into something like mkv but honestly I am not holding my breath that the wonderfully engineered firmware can handle something such complex as MPEG-2 inside mkv.

It is true that if the TV supports MPEG-2 video in an MKV container, the OP's TV manual doesn't mention it, nor does that page mention subtitle support at all. DVD subtitles might not be supported. Many TVs are limited to SRT subtitles in external files.

[nic2k4]

You may have to remux the vobs to vro.

OK, I will try this and let you know.

Thanks

Not a good plan, you will need at least 5 times more storage space than with an XviD of the same quality.

[Skiller]

But it keeps the original quality and no time is wasted on doing a re-encode.

Besides, why Xvid? If I were to re-encode DVD compliant MPEG2 to anything else (which I very rarely do), I don't see a reason to use anything other than x264. Xvid is outdated, so what's the point if you want to save space?
Your figure of "5 times more storage space than with an XviD of the same quality" is largely exaggerated also. In practice I've never been able to keep the re-encode transparent without going below about 2/3 of the bitrate MPEG2 needed. 5 times more space means you would be able to reduce the bitrate to only 20% of the MPEG2 original without losing quality. That's not even possible with x264 imo.

Not trying to be a troll, but why are so many people such bitrate misers?

[gabier]

Thanks to all of you for so many comments.

I laughed very much to some "dematerialisation" images and movies. Sorry for using this word which probably does not sound quite the same in English as in French.

About my technical problem, I retain the main points
- vro files does not seem to be a good idea
- I should try to make some tests to go from DVD or from VOB folders to MKV or MPEG-4 containers, and look how my TV handles this.
- After these tests, and if I find an acceptable way to go, I will have to decide if there is more work in converting or in retrieving directly from DVB or other sources the movies again.
I could mix both approaches by converting only the DVDs the content of which I suspect will be difficult to find.

gabier

[nic2k4]

But it keeps the original quality and no time is wasted on doing a re-encode.

Besides, why Xvid? If I were to re-encode DVD compliant MPEG2 to anything else (which I very rarely do), I don't see a reason to use anything other than x264. Xvid is outdated, so what's the point if you want to save space?
Your figure of "5 times more storage space than with an XviD of the same quality" is largely exaggerated also. In practice I've never been able to keep the re-encode transparent without going below about 2/3 of the bitrate MPEG2 needed. 5 times more space means you would be able to reduce the bitrate to only 20% of the MPEG2 original without losing quality. That's not even possible with x264 imo.

Not trying to be a troll, but why are so many people such bitrate misers?

Not trolling either, but I'm interested in your opinion so correct me if I'm wrong. In my experience an XviD encoded at 75% constant quality looks as good as the original DVD and a 5GB source usually ends up around 1GB. I'll grant you this is very dependent on the source, I've had noisy TV shows that gave files over 1.5GB, but I've also had anime that was well under 1GB for similar runtime. I like XviD for DVD just because it's faster to encode than H.264 and it fits in an MKV container as well as AVI. Outdated or not, it's compatible with more devices. That would be a different story for Bluray HD video.

[manono]

In my experience an XviD encoded at 75% constant quality looks as good as the original DVD and a 5GB source usually ends up around 1GB.

AutoGK you're using then? If so you're also allowing it to change the resolution? If so it's probably an apples to oranges comparison. Yes, by using the AudoGK default settings you might reduce the size by up to 80%, but it won't give you back a 720x480/576 encode. And once a lower resolution is used then the comparison with a 720x480/576 DVD source isn't really valid, I don't think. Yes, it might look good, especially when played through a standalone player to the television, but no one could seriously claim it would have the same detail and clarity as the source. But for ease of use, compatibility with more players, the faster encode speeds and other reasons, I can understand why someone might still want to make XviD encodes, especially with the dead-simple AutoGK.

[gabier]

Hi, everybody,
I come back after my tests in order to write here the results. I omit all the problems encountered because I was not familiar with all these converters, and maybe there are other ways to achieve the same goals.
I recorded a piece of movie of about 10 minutes with 2 languages and subtitles, and I made wih it DVD files just the way I made all my DVDs. Then I went from VOB to 3 different containers, all of them are declared to be playable by my Samsung TV. MKV, AVI and TS.
For MKV I used MakeMKV, it inputs VOBS and outputs MKV.
For AVI I used AutoGK, it inputs also VOBS and outputs AVI
For TS I demultiplexed the VOBS (VOBEdit) in MPEG streams and made a TS from these wirh TSMuxer
All these containers play OK on the Samsung TV, using MediaPlay and input on an USB key or on a computer via the local network. With the 3 containers it is possible to choose the language with the "tools" menu, allthough it is a bit long.
The problems come with subtitles. In order to get the "subtitles" menu and to choose on or off, you have to extract the subtitles stream from the VOB (i.e. DVDSubEdit) and convert them to srt. Then if you insert the srt file in the same directory and the same name as the movie, then you have the subtitles and the choice to display them, with the 3 containers.
The remaining problem is that the subtitles are displayed with a rather slim font, white color and a little shade. I would prefer to retain the style which is in all my embedded subtitles, that is a thick font with black outline, yellow color and I would like to be able to specify the size. All this is because subtitles are useful only if they are readable whatever the background is.
srt files have no standard specifications about style. Other allowed subtitles files by the Samsung TV (at least mine) are .ttxt (MPEG-4 text), .smi (SAMI), .sub (SubViewer) and Micro DVD. Some of them can have style specifications, but does the Samsung decoder use them? There is nothing about this in the user manual. I have sent a mail to Samsung to have more information on this subject.
The last feature that I had in my DVDs and I would like to keep is the chapters navigation. None of the 3 containers carries the chapters information, or, if it does, the Samsung TV does not try to use it.
The point is that there is a built in chapters navigation in the Samsung Mediaplay program. You can navigate back and forth while viewing a video. That means it is not necessary to carry the chapters information from the DVD to the container.

Well the bottom line is not too bad. If Samsung can improve a little the subtitles style, I am set for packaging the movies files to be stored in a NAS in TS containers (video and audio) and subtitles files.
For DVD conversion, I proceed as explained before
For new movies, they are recorded as ts streams. I must demultiplex them to extract the subtitles (ProjectX can output srt files), then use this subtitle file and the original ts stream to be sored in the NAS.
Thanks to you all for the suggestions.
Gabier

[usually_quiet]

I'm glad that you were partially successful in achieving your goals.

I think that you will have to experiment with the compatible subtitle formats to find out what works best with your TV.

TS doesn't support chapters. I don't use AVI. I have used MakeMKV a little. MakeMKV is supposed to be able to preserve DVD chapters, if the correct settings are used.